Breaking Bad's first season was great, but it was also really short! It felt like a prologue more than anything else, which means that for its longer and more ambitious second season, it's the point where Breaking Bad really begins to show just how excellent it can be.
Season 2 of this series starts with a strange flashforward, mostly focusing on a pink teddy bear floating in a pool. The season returns to this flashforward every once in a while throughout the season, building towards a big reveal of what it means in the season finale. Outside of this foreshadowing, most of this season doesn't quite have an overarching plot, rather it feels like more of a continuation of Walt's story. He faces off with Tuco by Episode 2, meets his lawyer Saul midway through the season, seemingly resolves his cancer in the latter half, and begins working for his new distributor Gus Fring. Season 2 introduces some of the best and most iconic characters of the series, with Saul adding a ton of enjoyable levity to the series getting his own spinoff in the process, Gus being an incredible antagonistic force, and Jesse's new girlfriend Jane becoming an incredibly important aspect of Walt and Jesse's dynamic. There are a lot of great storylines here, and the season as a whole feels incredibly well plotted-out, probably because it is! Apparently, this is the only season to be entirely written ahead of time, and it shows. I even like the surprisingly divisive plane crash reveal, I feel it's a perfect situation where Walt's actions finally result in genuinely devastating consequences.
However, Season 2 also starts to make one of my biggest gripes with the series all the more apparent. Walt either quits or takes a break from making drugs multiple times throughout the first half of the series, but it's especially bad in this season. Whenever something really big happens like Walt being kidnapped by Tuco or Walt learning his cancer is in remission, we're sure to get an episode entirely focused on his domestic life that just drags the pacing to a halt. It plays out the same way every time and those episodes ended up being some of my least favorite. Not to say I hate Walt's family, though. I didn't mention this in Season 1 but I actually really like Skylar White. She's a necessary foil for Walt who really starts to come into her own in this season finale, where she finally learns that her husband is keeping a secret from her. Season 2 also amps up the experimental stuff which I just adore, from the aforementioned vague foreshadowing, to the episode focused on Jesse and a kid, to Saul's lighthearted introduction, to the RV bottle episode, to the hilariously bizarre scene where Danny Trejo's head is attached to a tortoise with a bomb strapped to it. There's an offbeat vibe to the series that's always been there, but Season 2 definitely amps it up a bit.
There were quite a bit of great episodes this season, but these are my favorites:
Grilled: The lack of Tuco resolution in Season 1 meant that the first two episodes of Season 2 were focused on getting him out of the show, but hey, at least we got a pretty great episode from it! Grilled is a tense affair, Walt and Jesse's lives are in danger from Tuco throughout the episode, but having Hank be the one to save them and kill Tuco was both satisfying and awesome. We also get an introduction to Hector Salamanca, another excellent character who doesn't really get his time to shine until Season 4.
Better Call Saul: Saul is a great character whose arrival really signals a point in which the series takes a jump in quality. His sheer presence is a great bit of world-building for the drug world, but Bob Odenkirk's energetic and charismatic performance makes him so much more than that, a truly compelling and unique character of his own. This episode had a real sense of fun to it, there's a lot of comedy scattered around and the way Walt and Saul bypass Hank's sting operation was really slick and cool.
Phoenix: I went into this episode knowing that Jane was gonna die at some point, but I thought it would be during a finale or something. So color me surprised when, at the end of this episode, Walt walks into Jesse's room, sees Jane overdose, and watches her die. It absolutely left me stunned and desperate to see the finale...
ABQ: ...And what a finale it was! I loved nearly everything about ABQ, it took all of the storylines throughout the season and tied them all together, and a lot happens here! Jesse goes to rehab, Hank meets Gus, Walt cures his cancer, Skylar learns Walt's keeping a secret in a phenomenal scene, and biggest of all, Walt's killing of Jane indirectly caused a plane crash right over his house. Talk about facing the consequences of your actions. We also get the first appearance of the hitman Mike, a fascinating character who gets a ton of interesting material in both the later seasons and Better Call Saul.
Overall, outside of some moments of stop-and-start pacing, Season 2 is a strong improvement over the first with a longer length, some great character introductions, tons of memorable storylines, and a phenomenal ending.
4/5 Stars
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